The National Ecological Fund can obtain five times higher incomes than now if the Government approves the new regulations governing its functioning so as to enable it to access foreign funds. Mihai Roscovan, manager of the UNDP/GEF project “Strengthening capacities for implementing environmental fiscal reforms”, has told IPN that the National Ecological Fund, which is managed by the Ministry of the Environment, has a budget of 300 million lei a year, but it can get much larger foreign funding
“Regretfully, in the current organizational form, the fund cannot have access to foreign resources. During many years, the fund was managed defectively. The group interests and corruption persisted and there was no transparency. A lot of projects financed with money from the National Ecological Fund are not aimed at environmental protection, but at other necessities, which, even if they are vital, are less related to environmental protection. That’s why, on the initiative of Prime Minister Iurie Leanca, the Ministry of the Environment, with the assistance of UNDP, worked out regulations that stipulate a new system for organizing the fund, based on new methods and criteria for managing, selecting, working out, financing and implementing environment projects,” said Mihai Roscovan.
According to him, the regulations were endorsed by all the ministries and are now at the State Chancellery. They are to be submitted to the Cabinet for consideration. The new regulations are very important as they will enable the National Ecological Fund to get accreditation from the Global Environment Facility. “The accreditation allows accessing considerable funds. Until now the National Ecological Fund accumulated at most €20 million a year, but when it is accredited, it will be able to gain five times higher incomes for financing environment projects. For the purpose, the fund must be reorganized and the new regulations must be approved. This is a new possibility that appeared as a result of the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU,” stated Mihai Roscovan.
Besides the accreditation process, it is necessary to adopt such important documents as the operational manual, which would facilitate and make transparent the process of selecting environment projects and the method of financing them. Moreover, private sector projects aimed at reducing the negative impact on the environment will also be financed.
Contacted by UNDP, international consultant Juerg Klarer said that the Global Environment Facility is in the process of being created and the financial resources for environment policies will be distributed according to the “first come, first served” principle. The country that will want to get financing will have to prepare very well. “The Global Environment Facility will be large, with incomes of several billion dollars a year. The first commitments were made in New York several days ago. Germany and France are among the states that will contribute by 1 billion dollars. The goal this year is for the fund to accumulate 10-15 billion dollars and this money will be later used to finance projects to adjust and prevent climate change in the eligible countries, with Moldova being an eligible country,” he said.
He added that even if Moldova can access only 0.5% of the fund’s resources, the financing that can be obtained is much larger and the Moldovan decision makers should prepare well to be able to get such funding.
National Ecological Fund head Maria Malic said the fund cannot be now accredited as the current regulations do not contain such a mechanism. She approved of the initiative to work out new regulations, saying additional financial resources are needed for accreditation, but the final decision will be taken by the fund’s administration board.
The project “Strengthening capacities for implementing environmental fiscal reforms” is implemented by the Ministry of the Environment trough the agency of the United Nations Development Program and is financed by the Global Environment Facility.
